Nice Book Club

Preschool

Seed Science

by Jen Sherwin, an early childhood educator from Ohio.

In preschool, science is all about observation and experience. The aim is to allow children to witness, explore and develop interest in the world around them. Typically, nature is the topic of choice for the under-six set, and developing your child's understanding means talking about changing seasons, identifying animals, and comparing different leaves and rocks!

Talk about the animals you see in your yard, the life cycle of a butterfly, the concept of birds hatching from eggs. Compare different creatures, plants, and trees in the neighborhood: how are a bird and a squirrel different and alike? These sorts of questions and observations challenge your child to not only closely observe, but also to describe what he sees. These skills are the foundation for successful science learning later on.

For an easy project that sets the stage for some fascinating science, make this pine cone bird feeder.

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Kindergarten

Add it Up!

by Latrenda Knighten, an elementary school teacher with 19 years of experience teaching kindergarten through fifth grade from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

A large component of mathematics development for young children focuses on work with numbers, such as counting. Children learn to rote count (naming the numbers in the correct sequence) at an early age. Then they move on to recognizing numerals and number names. As students enter kindergarten, their work begins to focus on developing strategies for counting, keeping track of quantities, and developing an understanding of joining (addition) and separating (subtraction). A major goal of kindergarten is to help children connect numerals to the quantities they represent. Kids use lots of hands-on materials to make numbers “real” as they move them around.

Here's a simple game to help your child develop basic addition concepts, using something you probably have in your cupboard: beans.

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1st Grade

St. Patrick's Day Treasure Hunt!

by Julie Williams, a credentialed elementary, middle, and high school teacher from Palo Alto, California.

First graders love magic, especially if it comes on a holiday and even more if it's connected to “treasure.” So it's not surprising that leprechaun lore usually fills the classroom during the week of St. Patrick's Day. Often, teachers will read old folk tales aloud to help first graders learn their letters, sounds, and words. This St. Patrick's Day, when leprechauns visit your first grader's world, you might just discover that they can bring a little fun word practice too.

With just a few ordinary materials, you can create a treasure hunt that starts with a fun letter-code game and ends with "gold."

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2nd Grade

Celebrate a Lucky Day

by Julie Williams, a credentialed elementary, middle, and high school teacher from Palo Alto, California.

St. Patrick's Day is upon us, and in second grade many teachers will be using the holiday as a fun way to reinforce key skills. How can you use a little Irish spirit to extend learning at home? Poetic devices such as rhyme and alliteration are part of second grade curriculum, and here's a great chance to use them. Are leprechauns leaping? (That's alliteration--the repetition of initial sounds). Are they bringing us baskets of old gold? (There's a little rhyme). Try arranging for a "leprechaun" to visit your house and leave an example or two of these forms in a little note. Then encourage your child to write back in kind. You'll be spreading the good luck spirit of the day, while giving your child a valuable boost with a core skill.

Want more ideas? Click here for a creative shamrock card that kids can make.

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3rd Grade

Graphs Galore!

by Brigid Del Carmen, a teacher from Chicago, Illinois.

Graphs are a technical staple of grownup business and research, but peek into an elementary classroom, and you'll see them all over the place, too. Kindergarteners, for example, may graph how many kids prefer yellow apples to red ones; first graders may compare how many kids have birthdays in each month of the year. And now that it's third grade, the fun will continue. But get ready: the topics and the graphs will both become more complex.

How can you help your kid keep up? Take advantage of graphing opportunities at home! The key is to make graphs relevant and understandable. One place to start is your local utility bill. As communities work to cut energy consumption, utility companies are now frequently displaying your home's consumption each month, comparing it to previous ones or to highs and lows from the year before. Look it over with your child, and use it as a springboard for other graphs you can make at home. Try counting minutes of exercise, or time on the computer.

Or click here to try our Family Electricity Scorecard activity.

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4th Grade

Pour on Science Learning

by Julie Williams, a credentialed elementary, middle, and high school teacher from Palo Alto, California.

Most fourth graders are happy to tell you how oil and water don’t mix. Don’t be shocked if you see a roll of the eyes while you’re asking about it, either - that’s because liquids, solids and gases are common areas of science study in the early grades and fourth graders often think they’ve “been there, done that.”

This year, however, fourth graders commonly revisit earlier topics in a more complex manner than ever, as they hone skills of observation and inference which are also important in math. This is a great time to allow home experiments, as long as you can tolerate a little mess. Next time your child takes a bath, for example, invite him to cover his arms and hands with some oil-based lotion. Then have him notice what happens when he gets in the bathtub and the oil slowly starts to slick. How can he break it up? Have him float a bar of soap and watch the way molecules repel to "move" the oil away. How might all this be related to the ways that we handle waste water in our rivers and oceans?

To explore oil and water one step further, click here for a simple "lava lamp" chemistry experiment.

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5th Grade

Sticky Science

by Alicia Danyali, an elementary school teacher residing on the East Coast.

Your fifth grader already knows what glue is, but does he know that adhesives don't only come from a bottle? In fifth grade science, students explore the connections between nature and the common materials and substances that we use everyday. For example, many adhesives occur in nature and have important uses for plants and animals. An adhesive can be seen in a spider's sticky web, tree sap, and barnacles that stick to boats.

For a hands-on activity to make science sticky, click here!

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Middle School

Check Out Cause and Effect

by Liza Jenkins, a middle school Language Arts teacher and private tutor from Gaithersburg, Maryland.

In middle school Language Arts class, students are often asked to identify cause-and-effect relationships in the narrative texts that they read. A cause is any event or action that produces a result. The result is the effect. Sometimes causes and effects are clearly stated. In these cases, the author may use signal words such as “because,” “since,” “and consequently.” However, it isn’t always this obvious; the relationship may be implied instead. Does your child have a hard time identifying cause-and-effect relationships?

Click here for a cause-and-effect card game to get your child on track!

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High School

Get on Track with Distance Problems

by Cindy Donaldson, a high school math and computer science teacher in Menlo Park, CA.

“A train leaves Pittsburg at noon traveling 75 mph, headed towards a bus that left New York City at 11AM ...” It’s the kind of word problem that baffles even the most seasoned traveler, yet it’s a favorite of Algebra teachers and often appears on the SAT test. Luckily, there are five steps that are guaranteed to solve any kind of distance problem; all you need are a pencil, some paper, and a little bit of Algebra.

Click here for an activity that will help your teen get on the right track every time.

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